Liquid Death And Other Stories

by John Russell Fearn

  Jeff Rowland watched with surging passion as Helen Vane twisted and wriggled frantically, gulped and shouted hoarsely under the cone. The straps left crimson welts on her skin as she tugged against them. Then her struggles grew weaker; for the second time that night she relaxed into complete unconsciousness. After a while Kaylor removed the cone and stood regarding her once more.

  "It makes it difficult, being the only man who knows the secret of my work," the surgeon remarked, grinning ghoulishly as he washed his hands in antiseptic fluid. "I cannot have assistants. However, I think she will remain senseless for the next ninety minutes, and I'll be through by that time."

  "Through?" Jeff Rowland choked. "In heaven's name, Kaylor, what are you going to do? If you touch that girl—" he threatened.

  "Don't be a damned fool," the surgeon cut in harshly. "There is no sentiment in my business. You'll watch this through, and see for yourself what will shortly happen to you!"

  Rowland fell into a stunned, dead silence, heart thudding against his ribs. His horror began to mount as floodlights suddenly came up over the table and bathed the girl in their shadowless brilliance. Kaylor slipped quickly into sterilized overalls, again washed his hands and then donned rubber gloves. Finally, when fully masked, he moved a spotless instrument tray forward and began to tabulate his various glittering devices, made sure they would be at hand as fast as he needed them. His single-handed operation promised to be a feat of no mean skill.

  Jeff Rowland felt that he would go mad with fury and terror as he watched, as he struggled and battled and realized his own helplessness. Finally he was forced to give up from sheer exhaustion, stood sweating and cursing and staring in his shackles as Kaylor got swiftly to work with his keen-bladed scalpel. The vicious blade sliced cleanly into the body in front of him, sliced through the outer skin and drove deep inwards, severing arteries and veins that were promptly sutured. By degrees the ghastly truth ate into Rowland's spinning brain. Kaylor was keeping his word! He was making Helen Vane like that other unhappy girl; was cutting her body into two sections just above the abdomen, making swift and complex nerve connections, changing the entire circulatory movement, performing feats of manipulation that clearly showed he was indeed a surgeon of surpassing skill.

  Kaylor finished at last and reverently surveyed the upper half of the body he had divided. The lower half he removed and carried to a place unknown. Then he returned quickly, unfastened the upper half and carried it from the surgery, leaving behind him a trail of newly spilt blood that made Rowland shrink in nauseated horror.

  It seemed hours before Kaylor returned, and when he did he was grinning in cruel satisfaction, stripping off his rubber gloves. Then he tugged out his revolver and held it in a rock-steady grip.

  With his free hand he snapped Rowland's manacles loose and held him at arm's length as the prisoner tensed to attack him.

  "Better not!" Kaylor advised in a level voice. "It won't get you any place. Get moving into the conservatory—and don't try any tricks!"

  Hot with fury Jeff Rowland obeyed and finally entered that warm expanse of light. His eyes turned instantly to the body of the unhappy girl, sunken to her breast as her now vanished predecessor had been in the self-same green pit. She was still alive; the slow but weakened movements of her chest showed that, but her head hung with the heaviness of total unconsciousness.

  Kaylor approached the girl. "Anaesthetic not yet passed off," he murmured, brooding over her thoughtfully. "I have connected her arteries and nerves to the corresponding ones in the plant. This plant has a circulation of its own and needs her heart to keep it going. Once her body becomes adjusted, she will rapidly change and start to grow, blossom into something rare and beautiful—a plant woman!"

  "In heaven's name let's get out of here," Rowland groaned, turning his face away. "It's more than I can stand."

  Kaylor chuckled. "Weakling!" he sneered.

  They returned to the corridor, and the next thing Rowland realized clearly was of being flung into an empty, dusty room, and being shackled by long lengths of chain to an immense stake driven deep in the floor.

  "Don't worry—I'll look after you," Kaylor remarked cynically, his face painted into hideous shadows by the electric torch he held in his hand.

  "You don't think you can get away with this, do you?" his prisoner demanded, glaring up at him. "They'll come looking for that girl, and for me, Kaylor. My car's not far away. If anybody finds it—"

  "Thanks for telling me," the scientist remarked. "I'll move it into my garage. This house is safe enough, don't you worry. Anybody nosing in here will get plenty for his trouble—Well, I'll see you later—tomorrow morning, in fact," he sneered.

  With that he was gone, leaving Rowland utterly alone. Not very long afterward he heard the noise of his car being driven up the drive, then a silence fell on the terrible house…

  Rowland awoke from a stiff and drafty slumber on the following morning to discover Kaylor, standing beside him in the drab light filtering through the barred window. Amazingly enough the surgeon was holding quite a respectable-looking breakfast tray in his hands.

  "Better eat it," he advised curtly, setting it down on the floor. "I'm not doing it for love, but because I want my next subject to be as healthy and well fed as Helen Vane."

  Rowland winced at thought of the outraged girl, but he ate ravenously. He had to keep his strength up in preparation for attacking this fiend when the chance came. When he had finally finished he was released from the shackles, but held once more under the revolver threat, forced to visit that abominable hothouse again. To his surprise green blinds were drawn over the glass windows, plunging the place into deep emerald twilight.

  "Light hurts her," Kaylor muttered almost sympathetically. "She has changed amazingly in the night, performed a rapid metabolism. When I came in this morning she had her arms over her face to shut out the glare. Once I drew the shades she lowered them, and I could study her carefully. She's turned out a perfect specimen. Look for yourself!"

  Rowland didn't need any command, aided as it was by a prod from the revolver. His eyes were already fastened on the incredible sight of that girl, oddly changed in appearance now by reason of her skin having become shiny green, her golden hair deep jet black. Her soft arms were waving gently to and fro in a fashion that was somehow sinuously repulsive—a reptilian tendency following closely the sinuous formation of the ghastly plant of which she was now a part.

  Nor did the girl appear to be suffering any.

  "It's ghastly," Rowland groaned, thinking of the Helen Vane he had known and comparing her to this incredible creature writhing in the soil.

  "Horrible, nothing! You're just squeamish," Kaylor growled. "I guess you've seen enough for now. Back to your room!"

  Bitter-faced, Rowland obeyed.

  In the room once more the chains and manacles went back on his wrists and ankles.

  "I'll be back later," Kaylor said coldly as he went out and locked the door with a bang.

  For a time Rowland sat on the dirty floor trying futilely to conceive some method of escape.

  Finally he shook his head wearily and stared helplessly toward the bars of the window.

  III The Woman Grows!

  DURING THE DAY Kaylor came into the room twice to bring food. His final visit was at nine o'clock at night, bringing supper and a camp bed.

  "The better you are in health, the better I'll like it," was his cold comment, as he fixed the cot in position. "I'll see you tomorrow morning. Sleep well, and don't try anything funny."

  With that the door closed and locked behind him. Rowland ate in silence, surprised to find how hungry he was. Once he had finished he threw himself on the bed, cast the chains as far from him as possible and gave himself up to thought. Finally he slept…

  About midnight he awoke abruptly at a sudden peculiar sound. The noise was like soft, panther like footfalls—certainly not the brisk steps of Dr. Kaylor. Rowland heard the sound glide past the door of his prison,
soft and indefinable.

  "Hey, who's there?" he shouted, sitting up. "Who's there? Let me out of here, whoever you are!"

  There was no response to his request. The soft footsteps gradually receded into silence. But only for a while; then minutes later they came again, and again they receded. Quiet returned and saturated the house. Jeff Rowland found himself sweating in sudden fear, fear of the thought that perhaps the plant woman was responsible for the sounds. But that simply could not be! Why, she was rooted breast deep in soil, her entrails joined to the plant itself.

  He clenched moist palms tightly, then again he sat up with a jerk as the cloying odor of a peculiar perfume began to waft through his nostrils. In some way it was like acacia and hyacinth mixed together, heavy and exotic, almost indecent in its seductive aroma. Could it be possible that she was giving off this heavy mesmeric odor?

  Four doors away in his library adjoining the surgery, Kaylor too became aware of the perfume and looked up sharply from the botanical treatise he was studying. Like Rowland, his mind went instantly to the woman he had turned into a plant. And with that thought the first naked crawlings of fear became deeply rooted in the depths of his mind.

  He knew already that he had outraged all the laws of nature in trying to bridge the gap between human and plant life. Suppose that this new life happened to be charged with immeasurable differences, possessed of inflexible cruelty beyond human understanding? He shuddered. Finally he went to the door and opened it, to find that the corridor reeked with the weirdly seductive odor.

  For an instant Kaylor paused; then picking up his revolver he walked swiftly along to the conservatory and entered, switching on the single green-shaded bulb. His heart missed a beat as he saw his strange creation had visibly grown nearly a foot higher out of the soil!

  Kaylor stared at her, then suddenly there came from between her greenly lighted teeth a low wailing—the most ghastly blood-freezing wail he had ever heard! It strained his nerves to the breaking point as it sighed and sobbed through the conservatory like an unearthly moaning from the very depths of hell.

  In response to the eerie wail something stirred the tree. Its branches visibly moved with horrible, mysterious life. Again the cry issued from the plant woman's parted lips, and again the tree responded with a life that was terrifyingly all its own.

  "What have you done?" Kaylor demanded hoarsely, at last of the living statue. "Speak, if you can! What have you done to my plant? It didn't live and move like this before you became a part of it! Oh God, this perfume!" He clenched his fists and tried to choke down the power of that seductive perfume.

  The woman's teeth showed again in an unholy smile.

  "You made me into a plant and destroyed in me all that was human," she whispered softly. "I am glad now. I know things that are not known to mortals. You have given life to formerly immovable plants, Doctor Kaylor. For that I love you—love you deeply!"

  Perspiration dewed the surgeon's brow with the intensity of his self-mastery.

  "You—you can't talk of things like love," he muttered hoarsely. "You're just a plant—"

  He broke off and stared as her mouth formed again into a round 'O' and emitted once more that horrible wail. With that his nerve deserted him. He hurtled from that dankly perfumed glass house, with the vision of sinuous, coiling tree branches rooted in his aching brain.

  Kaylor gained his library in double-quick time and slammed the door, stood trying to calm his pounding heart. In his own room Jeff Rowland heard Kaylor's hasty retreat, and fell to wondering, not knowing what had happened.

  Then he set to work again on his chains, until fatigue and cramping pain got the better of him. In the chill and heavily odorous early hours he fell asleep, and dreamed of the horror that was slowly biting into his every nerve fiber.

  The following day was drear and forlorn. Gray clouds scudded over the heavens; sweeping blankets of misty rain poured across the fields and seemed to gather in solitary menace about the lone house.

  Dr. Kaylor was obviously shaken by the events of the night. Rowland could see it in his black eyes. When he brought the food in during the day, his hands were trembling.

  "Jitters?" Rowland asked, as he watched them.

  "No," came the angry retort. Then the surgeon straightened up and fell to thinking. "Did you smell anything in the night?" he asked finally.

  "Only perfume," Jeff Rowland replied, munching steadily. "It seems to have gone now."

  Kaylor drew the back of his hand over his brow. "Yes, it's gone now," he agreed tonelessly. "But tonight it may come back—"

  He said no more then, but went out with his head bowed in thought. He looked only once into the conservatory from the safety of the door and beheld his plant woman even taller, now nearly five feet high from the ground, sinuous arms still twining, mouth ready to form into that ghastly moaning wail—Kaylor beat a hasty retreat.

  Ever and again throughout that drear day the surgeon heard that ghastly cry from the conservatory. It penetrated the walls and filled the air with its strange meaning. Once Rowland heard its muffled echo, and the sound struck an odd chord in his memory. Weird and ghastly though it was, he was convinced it was not altogether an alien sound to him. But he had no time to dwell on it; his desperate efforts with the manacles seemed to be getting somewhere at last.

  By the time five o'clock had arrived he had worked his right hand free; withdrawn it, raw and bleeding, from the steely clutch that had held it.

  Nevertheless, he kept the hand out of sight as Kaylor entered with his supper. It was no use starting anything until he had the left one free, too, and that would take some hours yet. After that, he had only to snap back the ankle fetters and go to work on the surgeon when the opportunity offered. He was thankful when Kaylor left him again to his own devices.

  As darkness began to fall, Kaylor's courage waned in proportion. The horrible wailing from the greenery was increasing; probably "she" needed food. Then as the twilight gave slow place to black night, the perfume returned to roll in reeking waves from the conservatory itself.

  Kaylor spent most of the evening in the security of his study, with all the lights blazing behind drawn curtains. He could feel his courage slipping—so much so that he finally jumped to his feet and grabbed his ever-handy revolver. Either he had to shoot that damned woman and ruin the experiment, or else lose his very reason! This haunting dread of something ghastly about to happen, 'her' very presence in the conservatory, were things he could no longer bear.

  With tight lips he flung open the door and strode into the perfumed corridor, went swiftly along its drafty darkness and entered the hothouse, switching on the green-shaded light. His nerve began to fail him again, his revolver hand drooped.

  The woman was still there, of course, relaxed now for a change. Her hypnotic eyes fixed upon the surgeon from the shadows. Her lissome arms hung down at her sides, fingers nearly touching the soil. Then after a while she began that swaying motion once more, sinuous and seductive. The perfume radiated from her once again in sickening, overpowering waves. And presently that low wailing sob rolled from her heavy scarlet lips.

  "In heaven's name, stop that screaming!" Kaylor cried, as the twisted green branches of the devil plant writhed in rhythmic response. "Stop it, I tell you!" He stood breathing hard, revolver leveled. "I came here to kill you," he went on thickly. "Yes, destroy you—He broke off as peal after peal of hideous laughter spewed from her sensuous mouth.

  "Kill me!" she cried at last in derision. "First you destroy all within me that is human—change me into a hybrid, half woman and half plant, then you decide to kill me. You ignorant, stupid fool! Don't you realize that it is too late to do that? Hundreds of seeds of me are now in this plant—will blossom in the future, giving hundreds of reproductions of me! If you kill me it will make not the slightest difference—there will be perpetual reminders of me, haunting you to the end of your days!"

  Kaylor's face blanched. "You're lying!" he shouted abruptly, voice harsh w
ith fear. "You've got to be lying! What you say is unthinkable! Damn you, for your beauty, your perfume, your unworldly seductiveness! If you don't die I shall lose my reason—"

  He stopped suddenly and whirled about at the sound of a thunderous crash in the corridor outside. Even as he stood bewildered, it was followed by another. Quickly he made for the prison door, but at that identical second Rowland catapulted through it, face frozen with fury, bleeding fists clenched for action.

  Without a pause his right fist came up and smashed Kaylor under the chin, sent him flying backward. KayIor's revolver exploded into the air but his grip on it remained unshaken.

  "Now you'll get what's coming to you!" Rowland panted, lunging forward. "Get up, damn you! I'm going to beat you to a pulp, you—"

  He broke off short as Kaylor suddenly vaulted to his feet, gun ready for action. He fired—and missed, followed it up with a swinging left haymaker. Rowland sidestepped and brought up a terrific uppercut, hurtling forward to follow up his advantage. But Kaylor's bunched knuckles struck him with blinding force between the eyes. He went reeling backward, felt the sharp stab of a bullet as it tore like white-hot wire across his shoulder. Weakly he dropped down near the now relaxed and brooding plant woman.

  He could not be sure, but it seemed to him that she aided him to rise. He felt his injured shoulder and stood swaying, staring groggily at Kaylor's leveled gun. The surgeon was smiling viciously.

  "Fine spirit," he said softly. "I don't want to kill you—you will be too useful alive. Come over here—"

  IV Horrible Revenge

  WINCING WITH PAIN, eyes narrowed for the slightest sign of a loophole, Jeff Rowland obeyed the command, and this time Kaylor was relentlessly on his guard. He backed around menacingly as Rowland moved, so intent on his task that he failed to notice how close he was coming to the weirdly waving plant woman. The perfume from her body increased by the moment as he stepped further backward in a half circle.